It is the business of each local official, town overseer of the poor, county superintendent of the poor, and city commissioner of charities, to provide for destitute children. In the early days he used to provide for them by giving what was called “outdoor relief” to the parent, if either parent was living; if the child was homeless it was sent to the almshouse. For many years past, children between the ages of three and sixteen have not been allowed in almshouses, but have been committed to institutions.
Besides this public care, private charitable agencies began to establish orphan asylums, and homes for friendless children. These institutions often developed from small beginnings into large establishments, and began to draw on the public funds for at least a part of the maintenance of their inmates, and sometimes for their entire support. It was argued that if the State did not pay for the support of the children in the orphan asylum it would have to take care of them elsewhere.
No Definite Authority: For many years the authority between State and local governing boards has been divided. As a consequence, inspection of children’s institutions has amounted to very little, or has been, at least, ineffectual.
This inadequate inspection, in addition to divided authority, encouraged neglect and abuse. The report of conditions in private institutions in New York City, made in 1916 as the result of an official investigation, showed that dirt, insufficient food, vermin, disease, and lack of common sanitary precautions were common. Education was so much below the standard of the public school, with little or no vocational training, that children were discharged with no preparation for earning a living. There was not only an utter absence of home atmosphere, but methods and restrictions were used like a prison or reformatory. So little care was given when the children left the institution, that they often went out entirely friendless, with no one to call upon for council or advice, and utterly unprepared for independent life.
These conditions were allowed to exist, partly because of the divided authority and responsibility, largely because those in authority were not deeply interested. As the report said, “the committing authorities have not looked upon the problem as of sufficient moment to make it any part of their business to formulate and promulgate any competent standard to govern the service maintained in children’s institutions.”
New York City has tried the experiment of “boarding out” all dependent children between two and seven years of age, taking care to place Catholic children in Catholic homes, Jewish children in Jewish homes, and so forth. In some respects, this is a better method than committing children to institutions, but it is only successful if the child is carefully placed, and its welfare watched by appointed visitors.
In New York State, 1900-1913, the average infant mortality-rate of children under two years of age was 86.4 per 1,000, while the death-rate in eleven large infant asylums was 422.5 per 1,000. That is, under the care of the mother, even including the ignorant mother, only one-fifth as many babies died as when the children were cared for by the State.
Experience shows that children are not only safer and healthier with their own mothers than in institutions, but that they have a better chance with foster mothers than in asylums. In 1914, the New York City Health Department, as an experiment, placed seventy-five infants to board with foster mothers, with the result that the infant death-rate dropped forty-eight per cent.
Boards of Child Welfare: In 1915, the Legislature authorized the appointment of boards of child welfare in each county. These boards were to investigate needy cases and had the power to grant an allowance to a destitute mother for the care of her children.[6] This work is dependent on the appropriations granted by the county. County authorities are slow to act in matters that require appropriations. At the end of the first year, fifty-seven counties had organized boards, but only thirty-four had made appropriations; 6,014 children had been kept from asylums and 1,969 homes had been saved from being broken up. In New York City, the number of children in institutions has decreased 3,000 since the Child Welfare Board began its work. In 1917 New York City appropriated $1,250,000 for widowed mothers. The average monthly allowance, the first year of the Welfare Board’s work, for each child under sixteen, was $7.99, which is $3 less than it would have cost to keep the child in an institution.
It is now admitted that everything possible should be done to prevent a home from being broken up by poverty; that if the mother is living, and is a fit person to bring up her children, it should be made possible for her to keep them. That the mother is usually a fit person to bring up her child, is proved by the experience of the Board of Child Welfare of New York City, which examined four thousand cases of mothers who applied for pensions, and found only in fourteen cases that the mother was not to be so trusted.